2nd all-grain attempt procedures

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Brett3rThanU

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I just ordered the ingredients for my second all-grain attempt and was hoping I could get some comments/suggestions on my procedures for this brew. It's going to be an american strong ale, similar to Arrogant Bastard Ale. My first all-grain brew worked out okay, my efficiency was about 65%. In the recipe below I added 2# of DME to boost the OG to around 1.080 because I'm already anticipating bad efficency. 2# may be a little much, but I won't add all 2# if it's not needed.

13.5# 2 Row
1.5# Crystal 120L
2# Light DME (added if my efficiency is terrible to boost OG)

3 oz Chinook Hops
2 packages of Nottingham yeast

Since it's somehwat of a big beer, I'm thinking of mashing at little over 1 quart/pound (4 gallons), that way I can use more water to sparge with. This will give me 4 gallons of strike water I plan to heat up to about 173F and pour into my mash tun. I'll let it heat up the mash tun and stir until the water settles at 167F, then add my 15# of gains. According to the mash calculator the mash should settle at 150F which is where I want to mash at. Does 150F sound good? Being a big beer should I mash this low? I did an extract version of the recipe above a while ago and it finished at 1.018, so it was a somewhat sweet beer which is what I'm going for here. I'll let it sit for an hour, varlauf, and collect the runnings. I should get 2.5 gallons of runnings, so that means I need 4 gallons for batch sparging. I'll heat that to 180F, then add half to the grains, stir, varlauf, and collect the runnings. Then add the remaining sparge water, stir, varlauf, and collect the runnings. I'll then determine what my gravity reading is with 6.5 gallons of water and add DME to bring it to give me an OG of ~ 1.080 @ 5.25 gallons.

What do you think? Am I okay with my volumes and temperatures?
 
150˚F should be a good mash temp - You'll get some residual sweetness, but a still very fermentable wort. I like anywhere from 148˚ - 154˚ for pales and IPAs and the like, and 154˚-158˚ for dextrinous British beers like Hobgoblin or porter or stout.

Offhand, your volumes look in the right neighborhood, but I didn't load it into BeerSmith to double check them. I always use software to figure mine.

I wonder about the Cara 120˚L. 1.5# seems like a lot, what about using some Cara 40˚ or 60˚ instead? (I'm not a Cara 120˚ fan at all.)
 
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